A time for everything

On Thursday afternoon I was offered a teaching position at St Thomas's School in Kohimarama. And I accepted it! I will have either a Year 7 or a composite Year 7/8 class. They have great support for Beginning Teachers and there will be two other BTs starting next year - one of whom I know a bit from uni. Very exciting!

St Thomas's is Auckland City's first enviroschool - a school that actively supports teaching pupils to think and act sustainably for the future. Cool huh.

For those of you who are wondering how I'll get on at a Catholic school, fear not. It sounds Catholic, but is actually a state school. When it was opened 50 years ago, it couldn't be called Kohimarama School as there was already one of them, so it took the name of the Anglican church down the road.

Also, there may be some of you who are questioning the extra 's' on the end of St Thomas's School. You're thinking, "man, she's a teacher and she doesn't know grammar!". Apparently some great scholar at the University of Auckland said it's grammatically correct that way. Go figure.

So here's to a new phase in my life.. teaching.

What a cutie!

Check out this wee girl. I don't know who she is, but I came across this clip and she is just such a delight!! So cute!

Watch this

Click here.

Watch the video.

Comment.

Update: Scott showed me how to put a video in my blog, so for you convenience, here it is...

Story Time

Yesterday I was looking after some kids, and I had got the youngest two little birthday pressies cos they'd just turned one and three.

The three year old loved hers because everything was pink (of course) and she had special stickers, and then she helped her little brother open his.

Their mum read out what I had written in the 1 year old's card, and he sat very still - just listening. When she finished, he looked at me with this cute, kinda shy but happy look on his face, as though he TOTALLY understood what I had written. I swear, he looked at me in the same way that a 4 year old child might when you say something nice to them.

Children are capable of so much that we just don't realise.

thoughts

On Wednesday night, I was about to head out the door for Girls' Brigade, when I realised that I was taking devotions (bible study) that night. Eek! After uttering a quick prayer, I had a think while I was brushing my teeth.

I thought about how often God teaches me stuff through everyday little things that happen, things I do everyday without thinking.

So, in line with my current addiction, I got thinking about Sudoku. What can God teach us from this?

Well, it takes patience to do Sudoku, and that's a characteristic we should strive for. Yeah good lesson, but I realised there's more to it than that...

So I thought about the Sudoku puzzle that wasn't yet completed. It looked as though it didn't make sense - gaps everywhere, numbers all over the place - in fact, at first glance, it appears that there is no logical connection between them at all.


When I first tried to do Sudoku, it seemed impossible to have 1-9 not only in every box, but every column and row too. I had no idea. It wasn't until my friend Franny showed me how to do it, that I realised how it could be done. But it took time, and if I hadn't been shown, I think I would have given up.

To me, this is like our lives. Sometimes they seem all over the place, with gaps everywhere, and we don't quite know how everything fits together. We want to be perfect, with 1-9 in every box, column and row... sometimes we beat ourselves up because we're not perfect. We put a number in the wrong box and have to scribble it out and put a new one. We don't look carefully enough to see where everything fits. We don't look to God to give us a hint where to put the numbers. We try to do it ourselves, and fail.

But God knows how everything fits together, He knows where all the numbers go. And although we strive for perfection, we never reach it in this life. God shows us where to puts the numbers and teaches us how to strive for the best in life, knowing that one day, He will make us perfect.

Not that I have already obtained all this, or have already been made perfect, but I press on to take hold of that for which Christ Jesus took hold of me. [Phillipians 3:12]

Untitled

I have a confession to make.

I am addicted to Suduku.


Please note, this is Suduku and not Soduku.

If you happen to search for Soduku in the Wikipedia, you will be kindly instructed that Soduku is a bacterial disease - a form of Rat Bite Fever.

Suduku is a logic puzzle.

Don't wanna get those two mixed up.